]]>https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2016/12/08/links-12816-2/feed/0mikethemadbiologistDemocrats Have Always Reached Out To ‘Deplorables’: Lessons From 2008https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2016/12/08/democrats-have-always-reached-out-to-deplorables-lessons-from-2008/
https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2016/12/08/democrats-have-always-reached-out-to-deplorables-lessons-from-2008/#commentsThu, 08 Dec 2016 14:59:16 +0000http://mikethemadbiologist.com/?p=33349Continue reading →]]>And “reaching out” isn’t the same as pandering to their ‘deplorableness’. But we seem to forget that quite a few Democratic voters vote Democratic in spite their bigotry (boldface mine):

Democrats dwelled on the most obvious–and politically convenient–part–which indicates that Trump supporters are a lot more racist than anyone else. But this figure also contains an inconvenient truth (to use a phrase). The most optimistic reading of this is that at least one out of five Democrats are racist–and that estimate includes black people (I’m assuming most [black people] don’t believe these things; i.e., the denominator should be smaller). I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that one in four Democrats is racist–which admittedly is better than Republicans, especially once the Trumpists are factored in. We, too, have our deplorables.

There is no need to pretend the white working class is a monolith of moral excellence. Many working-class people, like many middle- and upper-class people, are bigoted, hostile to all kinds of people and lifestyles. But the job of a presidential candidate is to appeal to our better angels and win votes anyway. In 2008, the Democratic coalition included millions of black churchgoers who opposed same-sex marriage. In 2012, Democrats welcomed millions of Catholic Latino voters who opposed abortion. These people were not scolded for their shortcomings but celebrated for their virtues. This year, Democratic elites decided that the entire white working class was unworthy of sharing their company.

]]>https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2016/12/07/links-12516-2/feed/0mikethemadbiologistThis Metro Problem Has Nothing To Do With ‘Unions’https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2016/12/07/this-metro-problem-has-nothing-to-do-with-unions/
https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2016/12/07/this-metro-problem-has-nothing-to-do-with-unions/#respondWed, 07 Dec 2016 15:00:03 +0000http://mikethemadbiologist.com/?p=33324Continue reading →]]>And everything to do with managers.

While it’s almost always a bad idea to read the comment sections of local news blog, when I foolishly do read them about Metro, inevitably the idea that Metro employees are paid too much because of TEH UNIONZ! comes up. According to these chuckleheads, every problem Metro faces can be laid at the feet of unionized workers. Well, this episode of mismanagement really can’t be blamed on the workers (boldface mine):

Metro track inspectors copied the same details over and over for months, even years, regarding the condition of the tracks outside the East Falls Church Station, where a train derailed in July, and told investigators that they were pressured not to accurately report the severity of track conditions…

Fifteen times this year and 34 times in 2015, Metro track inspection reports show the exact same note: “15 deteriorating ties in the diamond area” of the interlocking outside of East Falls Church Station — the same spot where the derailment occurred.

In interviews with track inspectors, Metro safety officer Robert Davis who worked for years at Amtrak, said the same exact measurements for the width and angle of the track in the area appeared to have been copied over from as far back as 2011. The tracks would typically move a bit month to month due to regular use from the trains running over them. No change was ever recorded.

One track inspector admitted that if it rained or if he was assigned too much to actually accomplish, that some inspections would be skipped. Both inspectors, whose interviews with the Metro safety officer were made public, said that no Metro inspectors had known they were supposed to be regularly checking the center of interlockings on a twice-weekly basis….

Two inspectors interviewed as part of the derailment probe said that they would get pushback, and in some cases face retaliation, when they reported problems along the tracks.

Jovito Azurin, 50, who has worked at Metro for 16 years, blamed supervisors for at least some of the issues when confronted with reports he signed that showed the exact same measurements were detailed in reports twice in 2013, four times in 2014, four times in 2015 and once in 2016.

Azurin said he was told not to enter any changes to the measurements.

In some cases, Azurin said, information on inspection reports were largely preprinted for inspectors. He said he was sometimes assigned far more switches to inspect than he could physically get to in the given time.

Both Azurin and another inspector, Trapp Thomas, said that supervisors would get upset if a problem was identified as one serious enough to slow down trains or take the track out of service if the issue had not been slowly escalated up Metro’s defect reporting system.

“You solved the problem. You prevented something from happening. That’s not how it was looked at. It’s, well, why didn’t you find it before,” Thomas said according to the transcripts…

On the Blue and Yellow lines near Reagan National Airport, Thomas said a supervisor told him to ignore some problems and even took him for drug and alcohol testing as part of an effort to discredit Thomas’s reports of issues.

But so far no one is talking about a contract-with-America type messaging effort. No one is talking about mastering the intricacies of new online advertising opportunities. No one is talking about a 24 month, targeted voter registration drive. No one is talking about how to root out the endemic revolving door corruption that literally defines the last decade of DCCC failure. And no one is talking about the dangers of Rahm Emanuel and Steve Israel’s diktat that the default situation for recruiting candidates is easily corruptible, self-funding Republican-lite dullards.

Instead, one congressman told me, “this is going to be another damn personality contest unrelated to vision… [or] ability to get a very serious, difficult job done.” There was also a “battle” for Caucus vice chair that was won by Linda Sanchez (D-CA) over Barbara Lee (D-CA). Why the relatively unaccomplished Sanchez over the heroic and iconic Lee? “The CBC doesn’t see strong progressives like Barbara Lee or, for that matter, Keith Ellison or Donna Edwards, as part of their crowd. The CBC didn’t back Barbara,” a congressman told me after the vote, “not the way the Hispanic Caucus got behind Sanchez. She just sits around and plays video games on her cell phone all day. I couldn’t believe that vote! I heard Nancy let it be known to her closest supporters that with Becerra leaving the leadership, she wanted a Hispanic. That’s the way she plays….”

Yes, you get money, both directly from the party as well as access to Democratic donors. But that money comes with strings: it often must be spent on party-backed campaign advisors and consultants, who have a playbook of political strategems. That said consultants suck at their jobs is painfully obvious, but this is also leads to a lot of cronyism. As long as these apparatchiks can convince party leadership that their methods are sound, they can stay on the gravy train. While you might think this would be difficult given poor Democratic performance, most of these advisors work on the campaigns of the leadership and thus are trusted–after all, it works for the leadership. Until, of course, it doesn’t.

]]>https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2016/12/05/links-121216/feed/2mikethemadbiologistOn Feelings And Firewallshttps://mikethemadbiologist.com/2016/12/05/on-feelings-and-firewalls/
https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2016/12/05/on-feelings-and-firewalls/#commentsMon, 05 Dec 2016 15:00:44 +0000http://mikethemadbiologist.com/?p=33356Continue reading →]]>If you remember back to the Democratic primary, there was a lot of talk about South Carolina, with a large number of black Democratic primary voters, being Clinton’s ‘firewall’: Clinton would do well there and stop Sanders’ momentum. Regardless of whether you think the Democratic primary schedule is ‘fair’ or more importantly, useful to the party, that was the terrain, and both Clinton and Sanders had to fight on that terrain.

In national elections, despite Ruy Teixeira’s and others claims about a new Democratic majority, 2016 showed that the Republican firewall is the large number of white working class voters in the Upper Midwest and Pennsylvania. Like it or not, if Democrats want to win nationally they have to win some of those states. And down ballot, due to gerrymandering and housing patterns (often discriminatory, at least in the past), these same voters have a disportionately large influence, as Chad Orzel notes (boldface mine):

This morning saw the umpteenth reshared tweetstorm (no link because it doesn’t matter who it was) berating people who write about how liberals ought to reach out to working-class whites– as I did a little while back— for caring too much about the “feelings” of white people. While there are undoubtedly some disingenuous op-eds being written for which that’s true, I think it misses an extremely important point about this whole thing. That is, it’s true that these pieces are concerned about the feelings of white people, but only as a means to an end. What really matters isn’t their feelings, but their votes.

…You think it’s ridiculous that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.5 million votes but still lost, so you want to get rid of the Electoral College? Great. To do that, you need to amend the Constitution, which requires control of Congress and/or a whole bunch of state legislatures, most of which are in Republican hands, because they get the votes of those working-class whites. You want to ditch the Electoral College, you need to change those votes.

Think those working-class whites have too much power because of gerrymandered districts that over-weight rural areas? You’re probably right, but if you want to fix it, you need to control the legislatures that make the districts, and those are mostly in Republican hands because they get the votes of those people in rural districts. You want to stop gerrymandering and protect voting rights, you need to change those votes.

There are a whole host of things wrong with our current system. Fixing any of them requires winning elections, particularly those off-year legislative elections where Democrats underperform even when they’re winning statewide and national elections. Winning some of those is going to require getting the people who vote in those elections to change their votes, and hopefully their minds.

And that is why pundits and those who play pundit in a half-assed way on their blogs are saying you should care about the feelings of those working-class whites: because they vote, and you need their votes. And you’re not going to get those votes by berating them and insulting them and disparaging their feelings. You get their votes by understanding where they’re coming from, offering them something they want, and treating them with respect.

And again, this does not mean you need to cater to their basest impulses. Fundamental principles of tolerance and equality are not negotiable, and can not be compromised. But you don’t have to pander to racism to move some votes– most of the policies in the Democratic platform are already clearly better for those people than the Republican alternatives. It’s just a matter of pitching them in a way that makes that clear.

…Another common and maddening refrain the past few weeks has been “Why do we have to care about their feelings, when they’re hateful toward us?” The answer is, bluntly, that they don’t need your votes. They’re living in gerrymandered districts that give them too much power, and they’re winning the elections that matter. If you want to change the broken system in fundamental ways, you need to convince them to vote for policies that involve giving up some of that power. They can keep things just the way they are, or make them much, much worse, without any assistance from you.

But this emerging consensus around a Rust Belt revolt is wrong. People like Edsall have missed the real story: Relative to the 2012 election, Democratic support in the Rust Belt collapsed as a huge number of Democrats stayed home or (to a lesser extent) voted for a third party. Trump did not really flip white working-class voters in the Rust Belt. Mostly, Democrats lost them…

Relative to 2012, Democrats lost 950,000 white voters in the Rust Belt (-13 percent). This figure includes a loss of 770,000 votes cast by white men (-24.2 percent). Compare that number to the modest gains Republicans made in terms of white voters: They picked up only 450,000 whites (+4.9 percent).

Democrats also lost the black, indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) vote in the Rust Belt 5, with 400,000 fewer voters in this category (-11.5 percent). While disaggregated exit-poll data on BIPOC voters was inconsistently available across the five states we examined, in those places where numbers were available, Democrats saw losses among both black American and Latino voters. Importantly, some of the greatest losses in BIPOC votes were in states such as Ohio and Wisconsin, both of which adopted voter suppression laws beginning in 2012. But even in states with no such laws, such as Pennsylvania, BIPOC turnout was significantly lower this election cycle. In short, more people of color stayed home in the Rust Belt in 2016 than in 2012.

…Compared with 2012, three times as many voters in the Rust Belt who made under $100,000 voted for third parties. Twice as many voted for alternative or write-in candidates. Similarly, compared with 2012, some 500,000 more voters chose to sit out this presidential election. If there was a Rust Belt revolt this year, it was the voters’ flight from both parties.

The good news is that we just have to find a way to get those voters to come home again. Like it or not, we need to breach that firewall.

]]>https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2016/12/04/links-12416-2/feed/1mikethemadbiologistMedian and Marginal Voters: When Good People Get Connedhttps://mikethemadbiologist.com/2016/12/04/median-and-marginal-voters-when-good-people-get-conned/
https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2016/12/04/median-and-marginal-voters-when-good-people-get-conned/#commentsSun, 04 Dec 2016 14:59:26 +0000http://mikethemadbiologist.com/?p=33341Continue reading →]]>Before Il Trumpe has been annointed, there’s already a spate of stories about people who are disgusted by Trump’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, who like many bank CEOs profited by foreclosing on people’s homes (often fraudulently or over pitifully small amounts). Here’s one case that has been widely circulated (boldface mine):

When Donald Trump named his Treasury secretary, Teena Colebrook felt her heart sink.

She had voted for the president-elect on the belief that he would knock the moneyed elites from their perch in Washington. And she knew Trump’s pick for Treasury — Steven Mnuchin — all too well.

OneWest, a bank formerly owned by a group of investors headed by Mnuchin, had foreclosed on her Los Angeles-area home in the aftermath of the Great Recession, stripping her of the two units she rented as a primary source of income.

“I just wish that I had not voted,” said Colebrook, 59. “I have no faith in our government anymore at all. They all promise you the world at the end of a stick and take it away once they get in.”

…Colebrook wishes she could meet with Trump to explain why she feels betrayed by his Cabinet selection after believing that his presidency could restore the balance of power to everyday people.

“He doesn’t want the truth,” she said. “He’s now backing his buddies.”

Here’s the thing about Colebrook:

She now lives with her boyfriend in the small California city of San Luis Obispo. She volunteers at a homeless shelter, knowing that she could just as easily have ended up there.

“I cook at the homeless shelter because there but the grace of God go I.”

I’m guessing, like many decent people, she’s not up to date on the nuances of intersectionality. But she’s probably spending more time around the homeless than many of us. TShe’s probably not a “deplorable.” I don’t know if she would have voted for Clinton. But like a lot of voters, she regrets voting for Trump. No, really, there’s considerable buyer’s remorse regarding Il Trumpe: